Why did my Castle firmware thread get deleted without notice?

[Lizard]

Seems like my thread in the Castle section got deleted without any notice.

Silently deleting stuff without any further explanation doesn't shed a good light on this forum in my opinion.

Maybe somebody could explain what happened.

[Arct1k]

It was either BrianG or mike. I flagged it but didn't delete it.

[molak]

There are castle reps in this forum ...

[whitrzac]

I can understand why. It's information that shouldn't be available to the general public. They tend to be stupid and destructive. I don't think castle wants calls from people that bricked their ESCs.

Everyone is good at least one thing, breaking stuff...




Now if we had a super secret club house.

[Lizard]

Considering that the mods and admins _themselves_ were posting repeatedly about finding a way to flash genuine firmware to Castle ESCs, this is far from reasonable.

If that discussion is not wanted here, okay, I can live with that. However, one would assume that they would give people a hint by telling them or locking the thread (or atleast stay out of the discussion themselves). I mean, you see mods and admins talking about doing this repeatedly. Then, when somebody actually does it, it gets deleted without any notice. Where's the congruence in such a behaviour? -talking about it is just that...talk. When you get into the "how-to" and step by step instruction, it takes it to a different level.

Since the admins/mods seem to lack the balls to stand behind their actions and comment here, we can only guess about their reasoning. -My balls are not your business, but they are fully intact you can rest assured.


So, what possible reasons do we have?

Patrick being upset about this because of support costs because of bricked ESCs?
Castle doesn't offer warranty or support for Traxxas or HPI labeled ESCs anyway, so it makes no difference.

Patrick being upset about lost sales revenues because people now buy their ESCs in ChopShops instead of the retail-version?
Well, I guess Castle is making their main profit off of companies like Traxxas and HPI anyway. Every sold ChopChop ESC is a sold ESC for Castle, maybe with lower profit-margin, but they made money on it. But judging from the low attention this topic received on other forums, I guess this is completely negligible. As far as I know, actually only two people flashed their ESCs. Atleast for my case, Castle actually will make more money, because I will buy Mamba ESCs from ChopShops now, that I wouldn't have bought at all if it wasn't possible to flash them.

Patrick being upset because he now needs to find a way (and spend money on it) to prevent people from flashing their ESCs?
The software used to do this is actually old and already released to the public and has been superseded by an encrypted db version already, so the fix is already there.

Traxxas being upset because of support costs or something else?
Could be, but the fact that this topic did not get deleted on Traxxas forums (which is strictly moderated) stands against that.


So, no harm done to anyone.

Maybe I have overlooked some aspects. If I did, please somebody tell me.

[BrianG]

I did not delete the thread, so it must have been Mike. But I can see his possible reasoning; He sells CC stuff, and to maintain good business relations, it's probably best that his forum does not condone hacking product to circumvent controls put in place to keep people from messing things up, which may cause warranty headaches if something breaks during the hacking process. I don't know if anyone from CC contacted him or not, so anything is pure speculation.

[RC-Monster Mike]

I removed the thread, as I did not feel it was appropriate. I have a good relationship with Traxxas and Castle Creations and the information in the thread was potentially in conflict with these relationships, though nobody from either company contacted me. I made the judgement call as a business owner who understands that companies put things in place for reasons that make sense to them.

[Lizard]

I think that was maybe a little overcautious, but I can understand the reasoning now and respect that. However, my other points still seem valid.

Thanks for your comment Mike.

[targetingxmod]

There are things that are better sealed from the gran public!

And if we got marshalls here, we must obey their rules. Or go find another forum to debat the business elsewhere!

Been there some times in some of my rc's where detailed info about moding something is prontelly wiped! Even if's for the better! lol Traxxas stuff is one of them.

We all learn, and still learn everyday in this life!

Peace!

If you show one pic of your 1/5 motor on the Slash you will get banned for a week in some foruns :) lol